On Jun 19, 2012, at 10:17 AM, Johannes Trimmel wrote: >>> In some cases production and destination sites might be at the star port >>> or otherwise it might be practical to land the freighter in their parking >>> lot. But i would assume that this is the exception rather then the rule. >> >> Traveller has plenty of worlds with one town. If that is >> a company town, would the starport be located for the >> convenience of the employees or for the ease of freight >> handling? > You need a large enough parking lot that is empty at the right times, for the > ship to land. Given the SOP for free trader freight (which is generated by > the tables in question) is that the ship first lands and then looks for > cargo, not even putting your factory* next to or into the star port will > guarantee this, since the wrong ship(s) might be sitting next to your factory. > > Moving the ship to the factory for loading operation would be an operation > that in most cases involves star port flight control. Which means the star > port authorities will propably not like the practice overly much and try to > discurage it. > > If you have a standard setup with an upport and a downport and unstreamlined > ships go to the upport, and the factory is on the planet, you limit yourself > to streamlined ships.
Or you have specialize method of moving cargo between the two that is more efficient than requiring streamlining on every ship. Examples would include a space elevator or a specialized 'cargo tug' design that is only meant for ground to orbit operations. There are also social reasons for not wanting the ships to land right next to the factory. The company or government running the operation may want to keep strict control on imports and exports. In that case, the up-port becomes a good choke points. Anyone trying to smuggle by completely avoiding the checkpoints has to get to ground and back out of orbit without getting detected. -Bret_______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
